​I killed off one of my main characters in Bella Toscana and he's come back to haunt me.

Last week one of my coaching clients pulled the plug on our sessions because she needed to follow a different direction. About that time I finally gave in to the urge to read a book I had relegated to a stack on my kitchen counter. And just the other day my character - the dead one - pops into my mind with a completely new scenario.

What do these events have to do with your gut?

They're all about following your intuition. You may get a twinge in your stomach, hear a voice in your head, find yourself suddenly driving down a road in a part of town you've never seen. Because your intuition is telling you something. It helps you make choices, the right choices for you.

You may think that writing is about following a plan or an outline or a synopsis. You know who all the characters are, where they come in, and what they do. You've even worked out some unusual plot twists to keep the reader off guard.

That's great. But stories (like life) don't always play out the way you think they should. Sometimes your intuition knows better. I killed off the main character because I wanted an easy way to get him out of the picture. I didn't want to deal with the emotional drama of having him around. But after he left the story, it sagged. And I've been limping along, trying to fix it, without any luck. Until he popped into my head and created a solution. I have to put him back into the story, of course, but now I have direction. Now I know how to lift the story out of the doldrums and move things along.

So, are you listening to your intuition? What is it telling you? If you need help, let's have a coaching session and figure it out together. ​​​​​​​